Pros & Cons of A Message Board?

What are your feelings on this matter?

[Compworld]

I have an ecommerce site that has a decent amount of traffic, several hundred thousand members, and a decent amount of buying. We have a lot of members requesting for a forum to be added to the site. We had tried it once a few years ago, but a lot of the posts had nothing to do with the site, defacing the site, etc. It really wasn't a good fit. Our competitors have some type of forum that people can interact with each other, and that is what some of our members are requesting.

Now here's the problem. If we open a forum, I am skeptical that members might start attacking other members, might start to talk about the site or service in a very bad way, and use the service just to promote their own site or service.

Is it worth it? I really do not want to spend my days (and nights) monitoring a forum. I have better and more important things to do than that. Am I shooting myself in the foot for not adding a forum to my site?

CompWorld

[jonknee]

Just make sure to set up great categories (like on WW). Otherwise you never know what they will be talking about.

If you start having problems, you could always promote one of the good members to be a mod.

[BlueSky]

Is it worth it? I really do not want to spend my days (and nights) monitoring a forum. I have better and more important things to do than that. Am I shooting myself in the foot for not adding a forum to my site?

Forums add to a site's stickiness. More and more companies are putting them up. If you have several hundred thousand members though, then you definitely need moderators.

The answer to your concerns is a resounding yes. Some members will start attacking others; some will bad mouth your company on your own site; some will deface your forums; some will promote their own site or service; some will try to post pornography and other material you find objectionable. People are people. If you don't want these things to occur, then you need a small force of cops to keep the peace and defuse tempers. One way to focus people is pick very specific topics and if you keep the number of forums small you won't be all spread out trying to police it.

[edited by: BlueSky at 7:01 am (utc) on Aug. 15, 2003]

[Jenstar]

Forums are great at making a site very sticky, especially if they become popular. Set down very clear TOS from the beginning which covers everything from flaming to spamming to any "anti-site" discussions. It is easy to start with heavy handed rules, but nearly impossible to implement them later without people getting upset or mad.

Leaving a message board to run itself is a mistake, however. It can only take a single day (and sometimes even less than that!) for things to get so out of hand that your message board community will never recover. You will need to appoint or hire a moderator to keep an eye on things. If money is an issue, you can offer an order discount for a moderator perk.

You can also close it to the public, so non-members cannot even view the forums. This could cut down on potential problems too.

use the service just to promote their own site or service.

Set clear signature guidelines. For example, phpbb has a setting where you can only allow so many characters for a signature. You could also ban images from signatures. And set up one forum for "Promote your site!" where people can post their ad - this will greatly reduce the incidents of spam, when posters see there is a forum where their ad is actually welcome ;)

Message boards used correctly can result in more orders, member loyalty and referrals just because of the excellent quality of your message boards. Used poorly, they can spell disaster.

[Compworld]

Thanks guys for all of your input. There are definately a good amount of pros, but the mod issue is still a big consideration. I just wish that some people would just grow up and learn about self control. Ah, I guess its just wishfull thinking...

CompWorld

[Jenstar]

Where message boards are concerned, it is definitely wishful thinking. But paying a moderator can more than pay for itself in the long run, if you have quality message boards that make your site sticky. As an ecommerce site, you can't afford to have a message board without one, and "hope everyone behaves" - especially since it only takes one misbehaving member to ruin it for everyone.

[txbakers]

Anything to keep people coming back to your site is a good thing.

[Shak]

I have an ecommerce site that has a decent amount of traffic, several hundred thousand members, and a decent amount of buying.

correct me if I am wrong please, but based on the above quote, you run a business, right?

so why not treat the message board issue as any other marketing decision, that there will be costs to pay (moderators), and there will be ROI (new clients, more spending and good public relations).

having been involved in a number of boards in the past, trust me when i say there is NO way those things can be left on their own for even 10 minutes.

I remember going to sleep once at 3am , and by 9am when i woke up all hell had broken loose between several 100 members, lets just say the board was shut down very soon after that, 2 years work down the drain...

Shak

[Compworld]

We had added an Ikonboard back in 01', and within a few days, it was so hard to keep under control, management took it down. We then had decided to build a message board into our new software, but we are concerned about dejavu all over again. With thousands of registered members having acess to the message board, an army of five mods always online monitoring and switching, it would still be very hard to control...

I agree, would keep everything interesting, but would it hurt the membership? That is what we are considering right now.

CompWorld